The Earth we evolved to inhabit is turning into something more turbulent and unreliable at a pace too fast for most living things to adapt to. Rebecca Solnit More Quotes by Rebecca Solnit More Quotes From Rebecca Solnit In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn. Rebecca Solnit giving profound people I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America. Rebecca Solnit political latin america For me the insurrectionary possibilities of disaster are what make them really interesting and sometimes positive - Mexico City's big 1985 earthquake brought a lot of positive, populist, anti-institutional social change. Rebecca Solnit cities earthquakes interesting What is kind of beautiful about Katrina is that even though the media and officials are working hard at telling us everyone in New Orleans was a monster, in the immediate aftermath more than 200,000 people invite displaced strangers into their homes through hurricanehousing.org and an uncounted horde go to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to give, to love, to be in solidarity, and to rebuild. Rebecca Solnit new-orleans home beautiful I've been gratified to see over the twenty or so years of my writing life the West become less of a colony of the East; maybe new technologies and too much travel undermine the idea of provinciality. Rebecca Solnit technology writing years Growing up north of San Francisco, I immersed myself in the local landscape and in books about Native Americans, cowboys, and pioneers that seemed to ground me in it, but to pursue culture in those days meant being spun around until dizzy and then pushed east. Rebecca Solnit growing-up native-american book I think that fear of the mob, the expectation that people, particularly poor and nonwhite people become mobs almost automatically in the absence of coercive authority, is inculcated by the media, the movies, and politicians. Rebecca Solnit media people thinking I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other. Rebecca Solnit territory understanding ends Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that. Rebecca Solnit creative believe people I was not going to surrender to the status quo and corporate insistence that ordinary people have no power and influence. Rebecca Solnit influence ordinary people For me, before I learned how to read I was really interested in story and in landscape and nature. I decided to become a writer almost as soon as I learned to read. Rebecca Solnit decided landscape stories You don't have to be a preacher to talk about what matters, and you don't have to drop the pleasures of style Rebecca Solnit style pleasure what-matters I don't think my work has to be loved by everyone, and it's loved by enough people that I'm grateful and able to keep going. Rebecca Solnit grateful people thinking I think that walking down the middle of the street with several thousand people who share your deepest beliefs is one of the best ways to take a walk. Rebecca Solnit people way thinking A lot of people think of political activism as some grim duty, and I think we do have an obligation to be citizens - to be informed and engaged. Rebecca Solnit political people thinking No one is born a writer; literacy is a peculiar mode of being, but I was all about stories from a very early age, before reading. Rebecca Solnit peculiar reading age The exercise of democracy begins as exercise, as walking around, becoming familiar with the streets, comfortable with strangers, able to imagine your own body as powerful and expressive rather than a pawn. Rebecca Solnit strangers democracy body walking The more we heat up the planet, the more it costs all of us, not just in money, but in colossal famines, displacements, deaths, and species extinctions, as well as in the loss of some of the things that make this planet a blue-green jewel, including its specialized habitats from the melting Arctic to bleaching coral reefs. Rebecca Solnit some things money loss Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't. Not yet, but according to the actuarial tables, I may have another fortysomething years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I'm not holding my breath. Rebecca Solnit live me man men We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities. Rebecca Solnit nation society sometimes world
